APIs for connecting to BLE sensors on relevant devices?

I'm a software and electrical engineer and triathlete, but haven't (yet) had need to dig in with CIQ. One reason I was excited to upgrade from my F3 to the FR935 is BLE sensor support, but I guess that's still in a very basic, early phase? I've got a BLE sensor I'd love to pull data from in either an app or a datafield, but it seems to be the case that there aren't any APIs for communicating with sensors over BLE, only for communicating with a phone.

Is it true that you can interface with custom ANT+ hardware, but not yet custom (or even generic) BLE hardware?

Coleman.Apps over 7 years ago

Hey alexwhittemore,

Welcome to CIQ! Right now we do not have the ability to natively communicate with BLE sensors on Connect IQ. The closest thing we have right now is our Sensor module. The sensor module is going to give you access to the info from sensors that are paired and supported natively by the current device. We have a a few of our newer devices that will pair to a selected group of sensor types via BLE and that information should be made available through the Sensor module. Your assessment about the state of ANT+ and BLE hardware is correct. You can implement custom connections directly with ANT+ hardware, but not a custom or generic BLE device. Hopefully this helps.

Thanks,
- Coleman

alexwhittemore over 7 years ago

Hey alexwhittemore,

Right now we do not have the ability to natively communicate with BLE sensors on Connect IQ.

Thanks,
- Coleman

Thanks for confirming! Presumably you can't say one way or the other if this is on the roadmap? Can you say anything about the CIQ release cycle?

Former Member over 7 years ago

Can you say anything about the CIQ release cycle?

A while back they outlined what the release cycle should look like in this post: https://developer.garmin.com/index.php/blog/post/looking-forward-connect-iq-release-schedule

jim_m_58 over 7 years ago

Another thing to consider, it's not only adding the calls in CIQ, but the firmware has to provide the access, and there are multiple FW groups that would need to make the change.. For this "months" would be optimistic! :)

alexwhittemore over 7 years ago

Another thing to consider, it's not only adding the calls in CIQ, but the firmware has to provide the access, and there are multiple FW groups that would need to make the change.. For this "months" would be optimistic! :)

Don't get me wrong, I realize it's non-trivial. But given how non-trivial it was to add even standard BLE sensors to the Sensor API in the first place, it seems to me like the ball is probably well-rolling already. And I'd imagine a lot of the heavy lifting that goes into such low-level access (like controlling power usage, system architecture support, etc) probably applies equally to low-level Ant+ support, so it's probably not a complete do-over to add BLE. I don't suspect BLE was sprung on the CIQ team on Fenix 5 launch day.

renschler over 7 years ago

+1 for custom/generic BLE support! I have several pieces of fitness equipment which broadcast data (power/cadence/speed/etc) over BLE but I would need to write a custom app to parse it properly.

alexwhittemore over 6 years ago

I'm SO PISSED that this was just announced without support for the FR935.